They sailed for two days without incident.
The East Blue sea was calm, a deep and steady blue. Elian rowed in intervals, letting the wind do the work whenever he could. Shikamaru dozed at the stern—or at least gave that impression. The silence between them wasn't heavy; it was the silence of two people who had learned not to fill space unnecessarily.
On the evening of the first day, as the sky slowly turned orange, Elian set down the oars and stretched.
"Do you think it'll keep going like this?" he asked.
Shikamaru opened one eye.
"Like what?"
"Missions. Bounties. We keep stacking them, moving on." Elian looked at the water. "We don't have a real destination. We're just… going from island to island."
"For now, yeah."
"Doesn't it bother you?"
Shikamaru stayed silent for a moment, his eyes on the darkening sky.
"In my world, every shinobi has a village. A hierarchy. Assigned missions."
He paused.
"Here, no one assigns us anything. We choose. It's more troublesome to manage, but it's also more… honest."
Elian thought about that for a moment.
"And you don't regret it? Your world, I mean."
Shikamaru turned his head toward him, his half-lidded eyes unreadable.
"That's not a useful question," he finally said. "I'm here. So are you. The rest…"
He gave a slight shrug.
"The rest is just wind."
Elian nodded slowly. He picked up the oars again without adding a word.
Night fell over the sea, soft and star-filled.
***
The next morning, Elian trained in silence.
He threw shuriken at the makeshift mast planted at the bow, retrieved them, and started again. The motion had become natural—the release of the wrist, the rotation of the shoulder, the way he let go without forcing it.
Shikamaru watched him from the stern, arms crossed.
"You're thinking about affinity," he said. It wasn't a question.
Elian retrieved the shuriken and sat down.
"All the time."
"Why affinity before everything else? You could buy the Dancing Leaves Style now. You're barely 200,000 Berries short."
Elian slowly spun a shuriken between his fingers.
"If I buy techniques one by one, I build without direction. Affinity is the center. Everything else revolves around it."
He paused.
"Wouldn't you do the same?"
Shikamaru stayed silent for a long moment.
"Yeah," he finally admitted in a lazy voice. "That's the right way to think. But forty million… that takes patience."
"I know."
"Most people don't have that kind of patience."
Elian glanced at him from the corner of his eye.
"And you?"
A silence. Then, almost imperceptibly, a smile.
"Me? I'm too lazy to be impatient."
Elian let out a small laugh—brief, genuine. The first in several days.
***
It was the next morning, on a slightly rough sea beneath a cloudy sky, that they spotted the sailboat.
It came from the northwest, larger than their vessel, with faded red sails and a black hull. It changed course when it saw them—deliberately, without hesitation.
Shikamaru slowly straightened.
"He's spotted us."
"I see," said Elian.
They had nowhere to run. Their small craft was fast but light—the sailboat would catch up easily. Elian slid a hand toward his belt, absently checking the weight of his shuriken.
"We wait," murmured Shikamaru. "We observe. We show nothing."
The sailboat drew closer and finally cut across their path about twenty meters away. A booming voice carried over the water.
"Hey! Little boat! Got anything interesting on board?"
Elian counted quickly. Seven men visible on deck. Armed—sabers, axes, one or two rifles. At the bow, one man stood out from the others.
He was tall and lean, with short black hair and a scar running across his forehead from left to right. He wore a long gray coat and held a slender spear in his hand, which he spun between his fingers with natural ease.
His eyes were cold. Not cruel like Brek's—something more calculated, more patient.
Shikamaru looked at him a fraction of a second too long.
"He's not an amateur," he murmured very quietly.
"No," said Elian.
The man with the spear jumped into their boat without warning, landing with surprising lightness for his size. The boat rocked violently. He straightened, looked them both over, then a thin smile appeared on his face.
"Renzo," he said simply. "Captain of the Black Wind. Ten million Berries bounty."
He tilted his head slightly, almost polite.
"And you two… who are you?"
"Travelers," said Shikamaru.
Renzo let out a small laugh.
"Travelers. In a fishing boat, with blades at your belts." He spun his spear once, slowly. "I don't believe you. But I like it."
He shrugged.
"Give me what you have, and I'll let you go."
Elian didn't answer right away. He looked at the spear, Renzo's stance, the distance between them. There was something fluid in his movements that immediately set him apart from Brek—an economy of motion that betrayed long experience.
"No," said Elian.
Renzo blinked.
"No?"
"No."
A silence. Then Renzo smiled—a real smile this time, almost appreciative.
"Interesting."
He struck first.
The spear cut through the air toward Elian's shoulder—fast, precise, with just enough restraint to keep it non-lethal. A testing strike. Elian stepped aside, felt the tip brush his sleeve, and threw two shuriken in response. Renzo deflected the first with the shaft of his spear. The second cut his left forearm—shallow, but real.
Renzo glanced down at the cut, then back at Elian.
"Not bad."
He attacked again, more seriously. The spear was everywhere—short feints, unpredictable changes in trajectory. Elian stepped back, dodged, threw when he could. The boat rocked beneath their feet, making every movement less certain. Two more shuriken—one deflected, the other avoided with a sidestep.
Elian could feel himself losing ground. Renzo was too experienced. Every dodge cost him space.
Shikamaru moved.
His shadow stretched across the planks, silent and fast, reaching Renzo's feet just as he raised his spear for a third assault.
Renzo froze.
His eyes dropped to his shadow, then rose back to Shikamaru with an expression few people had—not fear, but genuine curiosity.
"What the hell is that?"
"Something you've never seen," Shikamaru said in a lazy voice.
On the sailboat, Renzo's men were starting to stir. Elian didn't hesitate. He took three explosive tags and threw them in an arc toward the hull—not to sink the ship, but to sow panic on deck.
Three sharp explosions in quick succession. Shouts. Smoke. Renzo's men backed away.
Elian turned back to Renzo, still immobilized.
He stepped forward slowly, a shuriken held at throat level.
"Your spear."
Renzo looked at him for a long moment, his cold eyes assessing every variable. Then the thin smile returned.
"I can't let go of it anyway," he said with quiet irony.
"When Shikamaru releases you, you put it down. And you call off your men."
A silence.
"And if I refuse?"
"You won't."
Renzo watched him for another moment. Something passed through his eyes—not resignation, but recognition. The kind a man has when he knows he's lost.
"Alright."
Shikamaru released the shadow. Renzo set the spear down on the planks without haste, then signaled to his men. The shouting gradually died down.
Silence returned, broken only by the lapping of the waves.
Renzo sat on the edge of the boat, arms crossed.
"Ten million Berries," he said, almost to himself. "And you two don't even have bounties yet."
He looked at them one after the other.
"You're new to this world."
"Yes," said Elian.
"You won't stay that way for long."
It wasn't a threat. It was a statement, delivered with the neutrality of someone who had seen many things.
Elian didn't respond. But he kept those words somewhere, quietly.
***
They turned him in at the first port they came across—a small Marine stop two hours away, little more than a dock and a few buildings.
The local Marine representative looked at the bound Renzo, then at the two figures who had brought him in, with an expression somewhere between disbelief and caution.
"Ten million bounty," said Shikamaru. "We take the money and we leave."
The transaction was quick. The Black Wind crew, without their captain, had turned back without a fight.
Back on their boat, Shikamaru did the count.
"Ten million bounty. Plus the 2,662,500 we already had."
He paused.
"Total: 12,662,500 Berries."
He set the pouches between them.
"Half for the Shop. The other half for the road."
Elian looked at the pouches. A little over six million for the system. He opened the Shop in silence.
40,000,000 – Elemental Affinity
He was still thirty-four million short. But the distance had changed in nature—it was no longer abstract. It was measurable, countable.
He closed the Shop.
"We keep going," he said simply.
Shikamaru was looking at the horizon, hands in his pockets.
"We keep going."
A comfortable silence settled between them. The wind picked up gently, pushing their boat eastward.
"Renzo was right," Elian said after a moment.
"About what?"
"We won't stay unknown for long."
Shikamaru was silent for a moment.
"No," he finally said. "Probably not."
He closed his eyes, hands in his pockets.
"That's why we need to be ready when it happens."
The sea stretched out around them, vast and indifferent. And somewhere ahead of them, affinity was waiting—patient, certain, inevitable.